Frank Abagnale's early life of crime impersonating an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer, and cashing more than $2 million in bad checks is glamorized in an Oscar-nominated movie, and a Broadway play, but the long-reformed con artist said his teen-age years were lonely and shouldn't be glamorized.

"How can I tell you my life was glamorous? I cried myself to sleep until I was 19 years old. I spent every birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, in a hotel room somewhere in the world by myself," Abagnale, 66, told about 750 business people and community leaders at the El Paso Better Business Bureau's annual luncheon Wednesday at the El Paso convention center.

"I always knew I'd get caught. Only a fool would think otherwise. The law sometimes sleeps, but as we've seen, the law never dies. It was just a matter of time. I was caught and went to some very bad places (prisons)."

Abagnale said his life of crime, between the ages of 16 and 21, is nothing he wants people to glorify, but it's those years that have brought him the fame, and the cache he's parlayed into a successful career as a security consultant attached to the FBI for almost 40 years. He's also a book author, and sought-after speaker. His speaking engagements were especially boosted, he said, after he was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit, 2002 movie, "Catch Me if You Can."

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El Paso Better Business CEO Margaret Perez said Abagnale was brought back by popular demand because he was a hit when he spoke at the BBB luncheon 10 years ago.

He also gave a seminar Wednesday about fighting fraud for about 350 business operators, accountants, and others.

"I have a natural ability to see things others don't," Abagnale said after his speech.

That's why he was a good con artist and has been able to invent security features for checks and credit cards, he said.

Keynote speaker Frank W. Abagnale shares a moment with some of the attendees at the Better Business Bureau's 60th Anniversary Celebration luncheon. ( RUBEN R RAMIREZ—EL PASO TIMES )

Embezzlement is a big problem for companies, and identity theft is the biggest fraud crime facing consumers, he said prior to his speech as he talked to people and had photos snapped with them during a pre-luncheon reception.

"It's an amazing and simple crime," and the subject of three of five books he's written, he said. "There are 15 million victims (of identity theft) in the United States each year. One every two seconds in the United States."

Abagnale spent much of his almost one-hour speech detailing his five-year escapades of impersonating a Pan Am co-pilot, a pediatrician, and a lawyer, and cashing more than $2 million in bad checks around the world.

He ad-libbed his life of crime as a way to survive after he ran away from home when a judge told him he'd have to choose between his mother and father when they divorced when he was 16 years old.

"Divorce is a very devastating thing for a child to deal with and then have to deal with it the rest of their natural lives," he told his luncheon audience.

Now-defunct Pan American World Airways, once the nation's largest airline, calculated that Abagnale flew more than one million miles over a two-year period in 26 countries aboard 260 commercial airplanes, he reported. However, none of those airplanes belonged to Pan Am because Abagnale feared his fraud would be discovered if he went on Pan Am flights.

Instead, he hitched free rides on other airlines posing as a Pan Am co-pilot who needed to get to a location to resume his work duties. It's known as deadheading in the airline industry. He also got free hotel rooms, meals, and easily cashed bad personal checks with other airlines while posing as a Pan Am-employed pilot, he said.

"I made a great deal of money and the only reason I quit at 18 is the FBI issued a John Doe warrant for me for interstate transportation of fraudulent checks," he said. The FBI didn't know his identity and thought he was 30 years old, he said.

The 6-foot Abagnale later posed as a pediatrician in Atlanta and passed the bar exam in Louisiana, where he worked a year for the Louisiana attorney general, he said.

Abagnale gets a never-ending stream of emails in which people call him brilliant and a genius for his early life of crime.

"I was neither. I was just a child," he said.

A loving and caring father made a difference in his life even though he never saw his father again after he ran away from home, he said. His father died at age 56 in a New York subway fall while 21-year-old Abagnale sat in a French prison, he said. He also spent four years in a U.S. prison. He got an early prison release by agreeing to help the FBI fight fraud.

His wife, who he met in Houston 36 years ago, and his three sons changed his life, he said.

"I could tell you I was born again, or prison rehabilitated me, or I saw the light," he said. "But the truth is God gave me a wife. She gave me three beautiful children (including a son in the FBI). She gave me a family, and she changed my life."